Wolf Creek Controversy

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum …

By Ken Wright, 4-06-06

A public debate on the proposed Village at Wolf Creek to be held in Creede, Colo., tomorrow looks like it will be a cheerleading rally instead. The two politicians most critical of the project announced yesterday that they will boycott the event after the group leading the opposition wasn’t invited to attend. Also invited to speak at the forum are Village at Wolf Creek president Bob Honts and representatives from the Forest Service, Mineral County, and the Upper Rio Grande Development Council, which is sponsoring the forum.

“They steadfastly rejected any attempt to allow people who understood the issue,” state Rep. Mark Larson, R-Cortez, explained on KSUT radio. He also noted that Colorado Wild, the uninvited environmental group, were “the ones who exposed the collusion with the developer and contractor on the EIS that was recently released.”

State Sen. Jim Isgar, D-Hesperus, and Larson sponsored in March a resolution in the Colorado Legislature that sought Congressional attention on the way developers had worked with Mineral County and the Forest Service. The bill failed in the House last month, but the project’s dealings with the county and Forest Service have gone better: while the county is appealing a district court’s overturning of its approval of the project, the Forest Service on Monday approved the development’s access across federal land to the 288-acre inholding the Village will be built on.

Dusty Hicks, an employee of the Village project and vice president of the Upper Rio Grande Development Council, explained that Colorado Wild was not invited because the group wasn’t directly involved in the project’s approval process, reports the Durango Herald. He also charged Larson with be a spokesman for the group.

Even without Larson and Isgar, the forum will go on, though. Hicks explained that the text of the legislators’ resolution and public comments received on the project will be used as “questions.”

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